What may be reused, what may only be cited, and the rights basis for every asset the site ships.
Code is MIT-licensed; see LICENSE in the repository. Everything below governs the data and the writing.
This project is coursework: Harvard Graduate School of Design, STU 1504
"Who Owns the Grid?", Fall 2026. It claims a licence only over what it made,
and describes everything else as what it is.
## 1. What this project created — CC BY 4.0
The following are original to this project and are released under the
**Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence**
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/):
* the four JSON Schemas and the era, tier and grain vocabularies
* every entry file in site/atlas/entries/ — the written text of the
dataset, decision, site and gap records
* every crosswalk in site/atlas/crosswalks/ and its stated method
* the reconciliation notes, including research/peak-basis-reconciliation.md
* research/SUMMARY.md and the agent write-ups in research/
* the narrative text of the reading in site/index.html
Attribute as: Xuening Wang, *Boston Energy Atlas*, 2026, CC BY 4.0.
## 2. Third-party material — cited, not relicensed
Everything else in this repository came from somebody else. It is displayed
and cited under academic use for a university course. **No third-party
material is relicensed by this project, and nothing here grants a reader
permission the original holder did not give.**
Every dataset entry carries a `rights` block with the holder, the licence as
that holder states it, and a `redistributable` flag:
yes may be republished with attribution
no cite and link only
unclear the holder publishes no terms at all
created-here original to this project; CC BY 4.0 per section 1
`unclear` is treated as `no` in practice. Material in that class is
described, linked, and fetched by a published pipeline rather than
redistributed as an open dataset. The distinction matters: displaying a
utility's circuit map in a student project and republishing that network as
open data are different acts, and this project does only the first.
Known positions, as recorded in the entries and in CREDITS.md:
Public domain / open, redistributable with attribution
U.S. Census Bureau (TIGER, ACS)
HIFLD (U.S. Department of Homeland Security)
U.S. DOE LEAD
MassGIS / Commonwealth of Massachusetts
City of Boston open data
ISO New England public documents (© ISO New England, published for use)
Unclear — no terms published by the holder
Eversource distribution-circuit geometry and DG hosting capacity,
served from a public unauthenticated ArcGIS endpoint
Leventhal Map & Education Center atlas tiles (attribution required;
reuse terms not stated — a permission request is open)
No — cite and link only
Data Center Map facility directory content
Photographs held under BY-NC-ND or BY-NC-SA, which additionally may not
be cropped or adapted; they are shipped uncropped
Kane, "Making Power, Making Land" (CC BY-ND — cite and link, never adapt)
## 3. If you hold rights in something here
If you are a rights holder and something in this repository is used in a way
you did not intend, please open an issue or contact the author; it will be
removed or re-linked rather than argued about.
## 4. No warranty
The data is published as a student research record. It carries reliability
tiers and stated limitations precisely because parts of it are uncertain.
It is not fit for engineering, siting, or investment decisions, and the
central finding of the project is that the data that would be fit for those
decisions is not public.
Site: site/index.html. Every dataset and image shipped in site/ is listed here with its rights basis. Anything not listed here does not ship.
| Layer | Source | Rights |
|---|---|---|
| Historical atlases (41 volumes, 1798–1938) | Atlascope, Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. Tiles: https://s3.us-east-2.wasabisys.com/urbanatlases/{barcode}/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png | Attribution required per each volume's TileJSON: "Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library." No explicit tile-reuse licence is published; email frontdesk@leventhalmap.org before public launch. |
| 2023 aerial imagery | MassGIS orthos2023 tile service | MassGIS licence: credit "MassGIS (Bureau of Geographic Information), Commonwealth of Massachusetts EOTSS" |
| Street basemap | OpenStreetMap standard raster tiles (tile.openstreetmap.org), desaturated in the browser | © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Light use only under the OSM tile usage policy; for a high-traffic launch, self-host or use a keyed provider. |
| Census tract and town boundaries | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic boundary files (500k) | Public domain |
| Prologue site coordinates and method | Genna Kane, "Making Power, Making Land," Leventhal Map & Education Center, Nov 2025 | CC BY-ND — cited and linked, not adapted |
File in site/data/ | Derived from | Rights / tag |
|---|---|---|
chart_peaks.csv | ISO-NE Net Energy & Peak Load reports and forecast_data_2026.xlsx (metered 2000–2025, forecast 2026–2046); NEPOOL peaks 1985–97 from SEC 10-K filings (NEES, CMP, Boston Edison), a 1987 MA Energy Facilities Siting Council decision, and the Commonwealth's report on the 24 July 1987 supply emergency | ISO-NE public documents © ISO New England; SEC EDGAR public filings; MA state documents public domain. All rows verified. Series are kept separate by basis (see research/peak-basis-reconciliation.md). |
tracts.geojson | Garibay-Rodriguez et al. 2025 deposit (doi:10.5281/zenodo.15778183) — leaks, GSEP pipes, ACS equity variables, 554 tracts; DOE LEAD energy burden, 441 tracts | Zenodo deposit as published; LEAD public domain. Shares (*_share) are computed. |
towns_solar.geojson | MassCEC Production Tracking System, installations by town and year through 2024 | MassCEC public data; totals computed |
substations.geojson, transmission.geojson | HIFLD open data, clipped to Suffolk & Middlesex | U.S. Government open data |
datacenters.geojson | Data Center Map — the Boston-market index plus all 26 individual facility profile pages, read in-browser 15 Sep 2026 (40 facilities statewide across 10 markets). Grouped into 25 buildings because the building, not the tenant, is the electrical customer. Each building carries its facilities, operators, MW, floor area, tier, certifications and profile text. Plus MGHPCC from Agent F. Addresses geocoded with the U.S. Census geocoder; 15 Shattuck Rd, Andover set manually. | Directory content © Data Center Map; used as a research index with per-facility links back to the source. Tagged secondary throughout except One Summer Street (verified against operator and public filings). Capacity figures are the operators' own marketing claims, marked secondary, and absent for 20 of 25 buildings — recorded as "not published" rather than estimated. Feeder matches are computed from geometry by this project (modeled). |
feeders.geojson | Eversource DG hosting-capacity ArcGIS service (DG_Hosting_Final/DG_Hosting_EMA_Final/MapServer/0), 1,230 circuits pulled one query each on 15 Sep 2026, 1,026 kept in the study area (1,062 records — 36 circuits run at two voltages and carry one record per voltage), Douglas–Peucker simplified (3 m), 4.3 MB | Public, unauthenticated utility service; no licence stated. Attribute to Eversource Energy. Hosting capacity is a per-feeder generation figure; the local substation name is blank on most circuits, so aggregation uses the bulk supply substation. |
solar_zips.geojson | MassCEC PTS installations aggregated by ZIP (the finest location published) on Census 2020 ZCTA boundaries | MassCEC public data; Census public domain; counts computed |
ev_public_2023.geojson | City of Boston ArcGIS: EVStations_042023 (AFDC extract) | U.S. DOE / city open data |
ev_city.geojson | City of Boston ArcGIS: Publicly_Accessible_EVSE (live service behind the city's Experience app) | City open data |
ev_candidates.geojson | City of Boston ArcGIS: Boston_EV_Suitability_Analysis_xlsx___Phase_1 | City open data |
ev_walkshed.geojson | City of Boston ArcGIS: 10_Minute_Walksheds_from_EV_Chargers_DA_Copy | City open data |
chargers_by_substation.json | Computed: each charger matched to its nearest feeder, aggregated by bulk supply substation | Modeled by this project |
sites_historical.geojson | Agent B, read off Atlascope atlas sheets | Coordinates eyeballed from georeferenced atlases (precision property) |
atlases.json | TileJSON fetched per volume from the Atlascope tile store | Metadata; see tiles row above |
site/images/)| Id | Title | Repository | Rights | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| c0-01 | South Boston Power Station, ca. 1912–15 | Boston Pictorial Archive, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | |
| c0-02 | Boston Gas Company, Commercial Point, 21 Dec 1888 | City of Boston Archives, Public Works Dept. | No copyright – United States | not currently placed on page |
| c1-01 | The Edison Electric Illuminating Co., ca. 1898–1907 | Boston Wharf Company Collection, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | |
| c1-02 | Electric storage battery station, EEIC, ca. 1898–1907 | Boston Wharf Company Collection, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | not currently placed on page |
| c1-04 | Disguised substation, Salem St., North End (1909 structure), 2025 | Pi.1415926535 via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 4.0 | share-alike |
| c2-01 | Lincoln Wharf Power Station, 1 Jan 1901 | Boston Pictorial Archive, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | not currently placed on page |
| c2-02 | Boston Elevated Railway Central Power Station, 1909 | Boston Pictorial Archive, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | |
| c2-06 | BERy manhole cover, Egleston, 2020 | Pi.1415926535 via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 4.0 | share-alike |
| c3-02 | GE kitchens at Jordan Marsh, 1955 | Boston Herald-Traveler Photo Morgue, BPL | CC BY-NC-ND | no cropping or compositing — shown whole |
| c3-03 | Charles L. Edgar Station, 1982 (HAER) | Jet Lowe, HAER, Library of Congress | Public domain (U.S. Government work) | |
| c4-01 | Air Conditioning Engineering Co. postcard, ca. 1930–45 | Tichnor Brothers Collection, BPL | No known copyright restrictions | |
| c5-01 | Boston Gas tanks, Dorchester, June 1984 | Lou Jones Collection, BPL | CC BY-NC-SA | share-alike; shown whole |
| c7-01 | Home EV charging, Dorchester, 2025 | 4300streetcar via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 4.0 | not currently placed on page |
| c7-02 | West Natick station solar car park, 2025 | 4300streetcar via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 4.0 | |
| c8-01 | Heat pump outdoor unit, 2023 | Wikideas1 via Wikimedia Commons | CC0 |
Full catalog with item URLs and the repositories' own rights wording: research/C-photos/images.csv. Machine-readable copy shipped as site/data/images.json.
research/A-historical-stats/.research/E-decisions/.#d9480f, winter #1c5fd6) validated for colour-vision deficiency separation and contrast; choropleths use single-hue sequential ramps.MapLibre GL JS 4.7.1 (BSD-3), D3 7.9 (ISC), Scrollama 3.2 (MIT), Work Sans and Source Serif 4 via Google Fonts (OFL).